Student Blogs
MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track Blog
 | Rahul is a full-time MS Software Engineering, Technical Track student. He loves traveling, trekking, swimming and is a complete movie buff. |
 | Anthony is a 2nd year part time student in the MS Software Engineering, Technical track program and works at OSIsoft as a Software Engineer. He loves spending time with his family, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, and sometimes photography. |
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Suma is an alumna of the MS Software Engineering, Technical Track program. A Mechanical Engineering undergrad, she loves writing and is passionate about music, shopping and dogs. |
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Minh is a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft and alumnus of the MS Software Engineering program. He is also a Vietnamese community activist, a cat-lover and passionate fan of film music. |
 | Nick is a Software Engineer at Google and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. He loves hiking, gaming, and both really extremely good and extremely bad movies. |
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Introducing Rahul Baxi
Hi, I am Rahul Baxi, a full time MS SE-Technical track student. I joined CMU in Aug 2010 and as I am writing this blog I am halfway through my first quarter. Yes, this program is very fast paced and gives no time to settle down. But at the same time it makes you “industry ready” to face the challenges of a very dynamic IT world. Before I dig further into the details of the MS in SE program, let me give you a quick introduction of myself.
I am from India where I did my Bachelors in Information Technology Engineering from Nirma University and then worked with Infosys Technologies Ltd. as a Software Engineer for two years. I am an avid traveler, love to hike, swim and trek, watch movies and listen to music. My areas of interests are Web development, network programming, embedded systems and application programming. Well, that’s pretty much about me and I feel I should get this topic back to where I started first.
The MS in SE is a 1-year program, which is divided into three semesters, each lasting around four months. The program is well designed with robust coursework that would aid students in honing their skills in Software Engineering. The faculty and other staff are very friendly and eager to help. Moreover, CMU invites experts from the industry to deliver seminars on latest technology trends. In all, it’s an extremely exuberant education environment.
I had quite an exciting summer as I had left my job and was at home doing nothing for almost a month. I visited family and friends during this break and then set off to USA. I came to New York just a week before my orientation program. I teamed up with one of my friends for a cross-country road trip from Georgia to California. With a month full of rest and enjoyment I was all set for starting my masters program.
My first semester at CMU started with a fun filled yet informative four days orientation program wherein I got a brief introduction of the program and the coursework from different faculty members and also I got the opportunity to meet new people. Classes commenced immediately after the orientation program with assignments due on the same weekend. Within the next two weeks, I had my hands laid on an entirely new technology. With regular team meetings and collaborating work with team members on weekly deliverables, I never felt like I’ve enrolled in a MS program but it gave me the feeling of working in a software company.
posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 10:52 AM
10 comments
A Refreshing Vacation - Now Back to School!
We are all back from our semester break. I say break because most of us in the part time program also work full time -- some of us probably didn't take any vacation (I was fortunate enough to take two weeks off). Nevertheless, it was great to have some time off to catch up on work, to run procrastinated errands, and of course, rest.
I took the Christmas weekend to drive up north with my family to see the Humboldt County Redwoods... it rained on the days I was there. However, seeing these enormous giants that stood still and haven't changed for decades and centuries was amazing. I guess it provides some balance to the life of the computer scientist, in which technology changes very rapidly.
Carnegie Mellon's Winter break is roughly around four weeks. As I recall, the Spring and Summer breaks are two weeks shorter. This worries me a little bit, but maybe we'll be so busy there will be no time to worry. It'll be full steam ahead starting from here.
It's the start of the new semester! For us in the part time Software Engineering Masters 2011 program, we are taking "Software Requirements". I don't have much to say about the class now, but in a few weeks, when the course work really starts taking off, I'll write more. Thanks for reading!
posted by Anthony Tang @ 10:29 AM
2 comments
Time Poor
It's nearly the end of the semester! Just three more weeks! In three weeks, I'll be 1/6th done with my masters programs here at Carnegie Mellon (time flies when you're having fun).
The hardest thing about being a part time student is balance. There are prior commitments to family, friends, work, school, and not to mention your personal life. Just juggling a few of them during busy times turns out to be quite a balancing act (minus broken dishes, add in broken feelings). To put this in perspective, 20 hours of part time school is 4 hour extra sleep a night -- quite a bit if you asked me. Most of the students I've talked to spend around that many hours working on school materials (not counting commute time). In effect, attending a part time masters program will teach you some very good time management skills.
Personally, I think it takes a huge amount of dedication. In this Fall and Winter season, the days are shorter and the amount of nice sunny days in which one possibly can enjoy are quite rare. There were some extremely nice weekend days where the sun was perfect, the air was crisp, the birds were in the air -- and we scheduled a group meeting to complete school work for the entire day. The "nice day" experience would be inside my car rather than outside biking or hiking. I think it's those moments which how big of an endeavor pursuing a masters degree really sinks in.
Thankfully, CMU and the students understand that family is more important than school. So even though I've been attending school part time, I haven't missed any important family or important friend events. This is the final stretch for this semester and then we'll have our month long break!
posted by Anthony Tang @ 3:51 PM
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Flow Control
The past few weeks have been hectic for those of us taking Software Foundations as we try to avoid getting "Railed" by Rails and finish our personal projects on time in addition to finishing our group project on time (if it means anything, we did get a two day extension on personal projects -- for those of us working full time, this really means an 8 hour extension). The personal project is a project to redesign or design a website you are passionate about, it is due this Tuesday.
I am not sure how many of the students were as stressed out about this personal project as I was -- talking to people in class and out, it seemed like many were more or less in the same position. The first week and a half of the project, I kind of slacked off and spent a week playing Metal Gear Solid 4 beating Laughing Octopus and Ravaging Raven (yes!) -- the XP software methodology factors in a week of "slack" in your project time line -- I just decided to be proactive and take mine early, which didn't really work out for me and really regretted it later.
We were given 3 weeks to do the personal project. The last 1.5 weeks I have been "pushing stone" and spending time to learn Ruby on Rails and pump out a personal project. There have been sweat, tears, and blood (figuratively). The days have been 6:30am, out the bed, 7:15am at work till 5:00pm or 6:00pm, grab a quick dinner, rest a bit and work on the project till near 2:00am. On the nights in which I stayed up to the crack of dawn and spent time debugging stack traces from my project, I'd think back to that week of slack and think that Laughing Octopus really got the last laugh.
I'd spend lunch hours at my desk, working or reading for school -- actually, sitting at my desk at my lunch hour is nothing new, although I would typically browse slickdeals.net or the few blogs that I read.
Nevertheless, the journey thus far has been quite amazing (my personal project is nearly done, just need to finish the testing tasks). I am learning to adjust to the flow of work and school and space out the load. Sometimes during those long days and nights, I stayed up late because I had to finish or debug a feature -- other nights, I didn't want to go to bed because I was too excited about features in the project. Though there are "rumors" about those who work in software -- environments void of light and lunch as microwaveable hot pockets (or cup of noodles), I believe there are positives, and I believe that those feelings are what every software developer yearns for : finding that bug that totally confuses you, coding some really great algorithm or idea and seeing it pan out, etc...
I'd also like to comment that the students (and quality of them) are quite amazing. It doesn't feel totally like a school; it feels more like a group. I don't feel competition as much as I feel empowerment and encouragement from fellow students -- useful information and knowledge is exchanged freely without hesitation -- very different from my undergrad. Because of this, I'm really looking forward to semesters to come.
posted by Anthony Tang @ 3:05 PM
2 comments
Orientation 2009
Hi, I'm Anthony, and I just started at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley as a part-time MS Software Engineering student! I'm in the Technical track of this two-year program, and can't believe the semester has officially started! After finally adjusting to life as a working - college student (again). The days have been long, and the nights have been even longer. I often wonder if I still have what it takes to "carry that weight" of school, work, and family; and I guess I have yet to find out. I think I finally can make time to write up this blog.
As a part time student, I only take one class at a time (in 7 week intervals), the semester, it's Software Foundations. On my first day of class, I was pretty surprised at the setup -- the video cameras and remote campus setup was quite amazing. There is even a push-to-talk microphone on the desk, and if you press it, the video camera in the room would adjust, zoom in, and focus to your position; I thought this was quite neat. Whether or not this really helps a person learn or not, I am not sure (I guess having a video camera in the room discourages sleeping); however it hits home something that I felt from Carnegie Mellon from the start, that they really aim to inspire and innovate.
I saw and felt this pretty clear in the three day orientation we had before classes, three days to meet and get to know your future professors, classmates, and also other faculty.
The three day orientation was quite interesting (though I would have to admit that by the end of every orientation day, I was dead tired). I think everyone likes to talk about the LEGO castle building activity (and why not?), but I thought the public speaking 101 was the most interesting activity done. The task was simple : to take a childrens book and read it to a particular audience with a given time constraint. I found the time to talk to faculty and professors on a person to person (rather than student to teacher) level quite refreshing. It made me feel like Carnegie Mellon was a school I wanted to be a part of, rather than just attend.
That's all I have to say now. With the full swing of the semester about to start, let's hope I have time in between school, work, and family to write on this blog. Thanks for reading!
posted by Anthony Tang @ 3:14 PM
1 comments
Gathering and Practicum
After a quite relaxing winter break, I'm back in
We have workshops and activities planned that aren’t just academically related, but fun, like an improv show or something similar or a nice dinner in downtown
But after this, I'll be starting on the Practicum course. This is really the capstone course for us, where we apply what we've learned to a real-world project. Personally, I'll be working with Nokia on a context-aware reminder system with three other people. This, I think, is going to be a really challenging test of what we've learned, and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be wildly different from anything I've done at Carnegie Mellon so far. So it's with a nice mix of apprehension & excitement around the challenge to come that another semester begins.
posted by Nick Lynn @ 3:41 PM
0 comments
The Fall semester ends as colorful as it should...
Running neck to neck with tight schedules and strict time lines, amidst challenging course work, technical seminars and student workshops; our fall semester finally comes to an end.Foundations of Software Engineering was a special course designed for specific requirements like team roles and project practices. Apart from trying new technologies, we also learned how to be an effective team player, efficient developer and constructive critic; all that takes to succeed as a team.
Avoiding Software Project Failures and Metrics for Software Engineers were other courses that help us as software engineers to study, understand, devise and propose the solutions to the problems posed in the coursework. We studied different samples and we invented possible solutions for them. In most cases, the problems were recurring software discrepancies and unavoidable crisis situations in software projects. The solutions we presented aimed to either solve the problem or reduce the accountability to loss if the problem persists. Both of these courses were real examples of the Carnegie Mellon learning-by-doing methodology – as students, we really saw the principle behind all the courses in this discipline here.
My semester was also spent doing much reseach, as a Research Assistant. For those who are interested in trying their hand in mobile software development, there are a number of opportunities. There are many research projects here for students to choose from ranging from mobile haptics to mobile meeting arrangers. “Smart spaces” is another research area where the faculty are developing intelligent senior monitoring systems.
Lastly, I spent my free time attending a number of workshops and special speaker engagements. We have some good technical seminars from different people in the industry, workshops on technologies like Ruby on Rails, Rho Mobile for mobile web development (development in Rails). Also non-technical resume writing workshops like effective resume writing and how resumes could be improved to make them reflect your skills and personality.
This is the right place to be, if you are looking out for something challenging and intuitive.
posted by Sumalatha Komarraju @ 11:20 AM
3 comments
